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When Frances Towers’ first – and only – book was published posthumously in 1949, it was an immediate hit, quickly going through several printings and earning rave reviews from critics, who praised her masterful abilities as a short story writer while at the same time lamenting that she would never write any more.

Several of these stories are in a macabre or supernatural vein, such as the opening tale, ‘Violet’, a favorite of Angela Carter’s, and ‘Lucinda’, which in her new introduction to this edition Alice Ferrebe calls ‘a surprising ghost story’, while other tales showcase Towers’ wit and humor and possess what one critic called ‘the enduring fragility of fine porcelain’.

Tea with Mr. Rochester (1949) collects fourteen of Towers’ short tales originally published in British and American magazines in the 1930s and ’40s. This edition of this rediscovered gem is the book’s first-ever publication in the U.S. and is the first unabridged reprint in over seventy years.

‘Tea with Mr. Rochester is an almost perfect short story . . . Towers’ world sparkles with satire, charming tenderness and real passion.’ – Times Literary Supplement

‘I would gladly read any line she has written.’ – G. W. Stonier, The Observer